Last week the bulletin cover
photo brought spiders into our awareness. This week our Torah story
involved poisonous snakes. On the first Sunday of Lent, when I asked you
all which animals you’d least have liked to see boarding Noah’s ark,
weren’t the first responses “spiders” and “snakes?” Well, “all God’s
critters got a place in the choir,” according to that camp tune we’ve
sometimes sung (by Bill Staines).
Even snakes and spiders.

I’ve never known exactly what to
make of that episode in the book of Numbers where God sends poisonous
snakes to the wandering children of Israel, thus giving them something to
really complain about. In a way, this story portrays the Almighty as a bit
thin-skinned. Grumble enough to the One who rescued you from slavery in
Egypt and see what you get. But, you know, there
is a stage between “eat
your vegetables” and “go to your room,” and I don’t think it’s “or the
boogeyman will come get you.” Is that how the Torah is portraying God
here?

Granted, there are other
murmuring stories in the wilderness portion of the first five books of the
Bible. In one, God responds to the people’s hungry complaints by providing
manna and quail to feed them
(Exodus 16).
In the very next chapter, to quench the thirst of these
mumblers and grumblers, God instructs Moses to strike a rock with his
staff, and out pours a spring of water. But poisonous snakes? Isn’t that a
bit extreme?

Some of us might say that God is
God, after all, and enough is enough. There’s no room for belly-aching on
this journey. But people are people, others of us respond. What about
divine compassion? Therein lies some of what tends to divide us, the
boundary between justice and mercy – that we get what we deserve versus
the power of love and forgiveness. The truth is: this book of books weaves
its way through both of those. They aren’t diametrically opposed to one
another. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

While I’m not sure what to make
of the snakes – I, after all, would be among those who’d have preferred
not to see snakes on the ark, though I’ve got to say I’d have even more
not wanted to greet any spiders getting on board (I’m just saying, the
“ick” factor is higher in me for the latter); while I’m not sure about the
snake portion of this morning’s Torah story, I rather like how the snake
figures into God’s response to the people’s pain. The very thing that
caused their illness and death is lifted up in a way to leads to healing.

Now, there are some problems to
this part of the story. That statue of a snake on a stick smells a bit
like a graven image. Didn’t God have something to say about not making
such things? Don’t worship idols. Isn’t that what we heard last week among
those ten words or commandments? There is danger in here. However, aware
as we may be of that peril, in this wilderness episode there is healing in
seeing the object of your fear lifted up, naming it, and in remembering
that there is a larger story, a bigger picture… “Through many dangers,
toils, and snares, I have already come. ‘Tis grace has brought me safe
thus far, and grace will lead me home.”

By the way, this snake on a stick
looks a bit like the Caduceus,
which features two snakes winding around a winged staff, that is used
today as a symbol of medicine. I could go to town on how this symbol is
tied to this story, but it really isn’t. It’s actually the staff of the
Greek god, Hermes, not connected to Moses and the Hebrew God. But, maybe
we could nudge our way into that symbol by saying that even today we need
to be careful not to worship medicine. The practice of medicine (and the
science behind it) is a means to get somewhere, not an end in itself. It’s
not God. Maybe some doctors wish to be seen as gods, but most recognize
the limitations of treatments. Yes, miracles happen, but healing is a
wilderness journey. Because, you know, there are still snakes along the
way. Cancer, for instance, still slithers… “‘Twas grace that taught my
heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved…”

Let me turn our attention to
another symbol, which is somewhat central the story of the Bible,
especially the portion of it we claim as followers of Jesus. Last Sunday
we removed the gold plated cross from our worship center and brought
forward the larger wooden one, to which we earlier this morning nailed
some of our present struggles and concerns. Brothers and sisters, we need
to be careful not to make a graven image of this symbol, just like we
should beware of idolizing the Bible itself – this vast story of God and
us.

Nothing is gained by waving this
book around as if it were God, without opening and doing the hard work of
seeking within it the Word revealed through the cloud of human hopes and
fears and dreams and failures it contains. Likewise the cross, a symbol we
tend to plaster everywhere. By the way, if I could have taken down the
larger cross embedded in our front wall so that we’d have just this simple
wooden cross, I would have. Too much of something can cause it to lose its
value and meaning.

It’s probably a good thing I
couldn’t take the larger cross down, as it is emblematic not only of our
salvation, but also of how we can’t avoid the struggles of human
existence. You do know, don’t you, that God did not create this symbol?
Yes, the Gospel, the good news makes use of it in a transformational way.
But the cross was a human invention. The Romans (and others, down through
the years) used it for torture and terror. It’s part of how they kept
occupied people in line. It was a horrible way to die, and it sent a
message for people to keep in line – much like being drawn and quartered
in ancient Britain, and being lynched in the southern United States.

We have to be careful with this
symbol or we might pass along the wrong meaning of it for us as followers
of Christ. When we look upon it, we are not to hear God saying, “Mind your
P’s and Q’s or this is what will happen to you, so stop your complaining.”
That, my friends, is not the voice of the One who “so
loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes
in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Jesus was lifted up
on a cross as a healing promise, not a judgmental decree, somewhat like
the snake Moses crafted upon a staff and held up for all to see and be
healed.

Dale Brown, one of my teachers in
Seminary, used to say that whenever we speak John 3:16, we need to include
the very next verse, which states: “Indeed,
God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the
world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” The
focus is not upon punishment. It’s upon healing, restoration, redemption;
it’s about saving. It’s also not just for the chosen few. It’s for
everyone. “When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the
sun, we’ve no less days
to sing God’s praise than when
we’d first begun.” This is for everyone who sees and walks in the
light, and trusts the Great Shepherd of our souls, even through the valley
of the shadow of death. The cross is for the healing of the nations.

Sometimes, however, healing hurts
before it gets better. When I was growing up, my mom had two go-to
medicines for cuts and scrapes. One was mercurochrome, the other was
merthiolate. Anyone remember those? Thankfully, there are better medicines
today. However, as a child I recall that while both seemed to work, even
as they stained the skin, one would really sting at first, and then the
pain would away. Even though it hurt really bad, and I hated it, I
preferred when mom would use merthiolate.

Yes, sometimes healing hurts
before it gets better. I’ve got to tell you there are days when physical
therapy is the last thing I want to do. There are muscles that do not at
all like being stretched, and they let me know it in no uncertain terms. I
could complain, but everyone else in the therapy room would have no pity,
for they’re going through the same thing. So, I murmur through my sweat,
and add one for good measure to every exercise.

The cross is a bit like that. It
reveals God’s healing promise, but heaven forbid when we forget the cost.
Yes, it’s about justice. As Christians, we approach this cost from a
couple angles. One says that God, being a just God, demanded a sacrifice
to make things right between himself and humanity – we being the
complaining sinners that we are. Out of love, God sent his Son to be that
sacrificial lamb in our place. We deserved the cross. Jesus died on it
instead, paying the price of justice. That’s one view of the atonement
(the big theological name for this doctrine) – Jesus as our substitute.

Another way of seeing things
recognizes this cost, but understands that the cross was not God’s
invention. It’s how the world turns. God didn’t require a sacrifice,
humanity did. Think about what it took Moses to convince Pharaoh to
release a bunch of slaves. It was the shock of death that shook the
foundations enough for the ruler of Egypt to finally let God’s people go,
and even then it involved parting the sea to accomplish it. Insert however
you understand evil – as a person (the Evil One), or as an impersonal
power – let this stand in for Pharaoh, and here is an older understanding
of the atonement. Jesus defeated the power of sin and death by dying on
the cross. It wasn’t God who demanded his death. It was God in Christ who
accomplished it, however. That’s another view of the atonement – Christ
the victor.

Actually, these views are not
necessarily opposed to one another. Some might see them as two sides to
the same coin, just like justice and mercy. Regardless, in either case God
took the initiative. As the apostle Paul put it, God is rich in mercy, and
while we were in the middle of our wilderness of sin, our wasteland of
heartache and struggle, our grumbling and murmuring, our fear and
trembling – okay, let’s just say it, when our story was finished, kaput,
dead because well, we are who we are, and we treat each other and the
world and the One who made (and even ourselves) in the corrupt way we do;
while we were doing this (in fact, while we still do it), God embraced us
in Christ.

Why? Because of God’s crazy love
for us and for the world. Because of a grace that is so incomprehensible
(I mean, why would anyone go this far?); so incomprehensible that the word
“amazing” doesn’t even do it justice. We are saved by this grace, this
love, this gift, this healing promise… Now, here’s the kicker, the part
that blows me away. You know that symbol in the wilderness Moses lifted up
so that when the children of Israel looked upon it, holding as it did
something they had grown to fear as the cause of their pain and illness
and death. Yes, the cross is sort of like that symbol. But, guess what, so
is the church.

“We are what God has made of us,”
Paul says. We are God’s accomplishment through Jesus on the cross, through
the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. We are created in Christ Jesus and
lifted up (raised up) for good works, for helping one another to be whole
in him. Like an alcoholic in an AA meeting, we stand, speak our name,
identify our ongoing struggle, and God’s healing promise is lifted up in
this wilderness… May it be so.